Survival was the fourth and final story of season 26 of Doctor Who. As such it was the final story to be broadcast, although not produced, of the show's original run. Following the airing of its last episode, the series would enter a period of wilderness years devoid of new televised adventures until an attempt was made to revive it in 1996. As a TV show, Doctor Who would not see any regular airings for 16 years, with these wilderness years being both a period of cancellation and a hiatus simultaneously; while the show was officially discontinued, there were official attempts to revive it and the BBC officially classified the wilderness years as a hiatus during and after its occurrence. The next story in the show to be part of a regularly airing program would be Rose, broadcast in 2005. This story would finally mark the undoing of Doctor Who's cancellation, though taking place significantly later in the Doctor's life.

It marks the final appearance of Sophie Aldred as Ace in a regular television serial; although she would reappear for the special 1993 Children in Need special Dimensions in Time. It was also the last time that Anthony Ainley appeared as the Master in a regular televised story; he appeared one more time in the video game Destiny of the Doctors. Ainley's final portrayal of the Master in the original series is considerably different - subtle and darker than the often bombastic and forceful impression he had been told to deliver since Logopolis; Ainley had always intended to portray the Master with this calmer characterization.

Lisa Bowerman would ironically make her debut in Doctor Who during its final classic episode, as Karra. However, she would later become more widely recognisable for her portrayal as Bernice Summerfield, a character introduced in and adapted from the Virgin New Adventures novels which continued the series and the adventures of the Seventh Doctor in printed format.

Despite making his final full appearance in Survival, Sylvester McCoy would return as the Doctor in the 1996 television film, marking his final outing as the Doctor both chronologically and from a production standpoint. Since the film focused mainly on his immediatesuccessor, McCoy was brought in to mark his own departure, with the Seventh Doctor regenerating into the Eighth shortly into the film.

The Seventh Doctor brings Ace back to her home town of Perivale in the suburbs of North West London. A mysterious black cat is wandering around and humans are hunted down and made to disappear to another world. Ace grows worried; most of her old friends seem to have disappeared, but the Doctor is preoccupied with the behaviour of the strange cat. It becomes apparent it is controlled by a strange being in the other world, viewing Perivale through its eyes and choosing which humans to chase and transport. An unhappy young man, Stuart, is his next victim. Ace follows soon afterwards, hunted down by a Cheetah Person on horseback, with a hunting affinity with the curious cat. The Doctor and a keep-fit instructor called Paterson are chosen and teleported to another world, bathed in a blood-red sky, where the Doctor finds his nemesis the Master greeting him.

The Master is evidently unwell. His eyes and mouth show feline characteristics and he uses the black cat, a kitling, to create a dimensional bridge for the Cheetah People to hunt prey on Earth. His reasons are unclear; he seems keen to keep the Cheetah People occupied. He tells the Doctor the planet is alive and has a bewitching influence. The indigenes bred the kitlings and had a great civilisation, then regressed into animals. The Master is beginning to show changes and needs the Doctor's help to escape.

Ace has seen some of her friends, Shreela and Midge, hiding in woods with a young man called Derek. The planet is clearly dangerous. Ace and her friends find the Doctor and Paterson. The Time Lorddeduces they are on an ancient, dying planet. A Cheetah Person hunts and kills a terrified milkman, prompting a Cheetah pack to attack the Doctor, Ace and friends. During the fight, Midge kills one Cheetah person and Ace injures another, called Karra. Ace forms an attachment to Karra and tends her injuries. Karra is intrigued by Captain Sorin's shiny cap insignia which Ace has on her jacket, (TV: The Curse of Fenric) and gently paws at it. This worries the Doctor. He says that the only way they can return to Earth is if one of them turns into a Cheetah and then brings his prey home. That happens with Midge and the Master uses him to return to Earth. Karra appears again and Ace's eyes change and she begins to transform into a Cheetah herself.

Ace abandons the Doctor to go hunting with Karra but he eventually wins her around. Midge has fallen to the power of the planet and is turning into a beast. The Master seizes on this and has Midge teleport back to Earth, away from the dying world. He possesses Midge and goes with him to the youth club, using his hypnotic powers to enslave Paterson's students. The Doctor persuades Ace to help him return to Perivale, also letting Paterson, Derek and Shreela flee the planet. Patterson insists nothing is amiss, falling back on his "survival of the fittest" mantras and self-defence classes. The Doctor and Ace roam Perivale in search of Midge and the Master. They find them at the youth club. They have killed Paterson for sport; Midge, too, is killed in the Master's machinations. Karra's arrival brings comfort to Ace, whose transformation continues, but the Master kills Karra too. As she dies, she transforms into a human woman, her metamorphosis having been reversed by death. With her final breath, Karra praises the hunt before another Cheetah Person teleports her dead body away.

Meanwhile, the Doctor catches up to the Master, and finds him trying to pick the lock to the TARDIS. The Master gloats that he is capable of controlling the raw power given to him by the planet and declares that he will use it to destroy the Doctor, before grabbing him and taking him back to the Cheetah Planet for a final confrontation. In the ensuring struggle, the Master starts out having the upper hand, but the Doctor, drawing from the planet's power, manages to turn the tables on him, and soon has him at his mercy, and raises a skull to bash him with. But in a moment of clarity, the Doctor realizes what he is doing is wrong and manages to resist the planet's pull, turning away from violence. The Master demands that they finish their fight, but the Doctor tries to convince him to let go of the violence too, pointing out that they will destroy both the planet and themselves if they keep fighting. The Master, however, rejects this and, grabbing the Doctor in a stranglehold, he spitefully tells him that he should have killed him while he had the chance. The Doctor screams out "If we fight like, animals we'll die like animals!", as the Master raises a club over his head to hit him with. But before the Master can strike him, the Doctor is teleported away. The Master is left for dead as the planet begins to break up.

The Doctor has gone back to the TARDIS and Earth, where he finds Ace. Her metamorphosis has reversed. He tells her she will have grown through the experience; the element of the Cheetah Planet, however, will remain within her forever. Ace is glad; it gave her a wonderful feeling. She then asks what happened to the Master. "Who knows?" answers the Doctor with a hint of sadness, before he asks Ace where they should go to now. "Home," answers Ace with a smile, "The TARDIS." The two walk off into the distance arm in arm, as the Doctor talks of adventures that await. As they walk, the Seventh Doctor ponders that "there are worlds out there where the sky is burning, the seas sleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere, there's danger; somewhere, there's injustice; and somewhere else, the tea's getting cold!" Knowing his place in the world, the Doctor assures Ace that "we've got work to do."

Working titles for this story included Cat-Flap, Blood Hunt and The Survival.

Survival was one of only three Doctor Who serials to be recorded completely on BBC Outside Broadcast video, instead of the mix of on-location and studio video that was more usual since 1964's The Reign of Terror, and/or the mix of film and video that was utilized from the aforementioned serial to 1985's Revelation of the Daleks. This was probably possible because Ghost Light, the next story in production, was filmed completely in the studio. The only other stories filmed on OB video were The Sontaran Experiment and The Curse of Fenric.

The first part of this serial features guest appearances by comedians Gareth Hale and Norman Pace, collectively known as "Hale and Pace" and actress Adele Silva (as an eight-year old, in her first television role). Hale and Pace swapped roles soon before recording; Hale was originally to have played Harvey, while Pace was originally to have played Len.

Stunt legend Eddie Kidd doubles for William Barton in a motorcycle crash scene in part three. This led to the series' regular stunt arranger Tip Tipping walking off the production, as Kidd was apparently not a member of the actors' union Equity. Tipping's anger was arguably misplaced, however. Margaret Thatcher's government had abolished the requirement of performers to be Equity members earlier in 1988. In other words, Doctor Who was not in violation of any then-current union regulations. Tipping's beef was really with the changes Thatcher — and not John Nathan-Turner — had brought in.

The Radio Times programme listing for part one was accompanied by a black and white full-length cartoon illustration by Christian Adams depicting the Doctor and Ace with seven different ray-gun muzzles pointed at them, along with a single tentacle, with the accompanying caption "All-round trouble: the Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace (Sophie Aldred) find that nostalgia ain't what it used to be / Doctor Who, 7.35 p.m. BBC1".

This was the last story until 2012 to feature the face of the current Doctor in the title sequence, a tradition dating back to The Macra Terror in 1967. The TV Movie that followed this and the first six and a half series of the 2005 revival had title sequences featuring a "time tunnel" effect with the TARDIS, but without the Doctor's face. The TV movie did include an extreme close-up of the Master's cat's eyes in the opening sequence, harkening back to this story. The Doctor's face would not be seen in the title sequence again until The Snowmen, approximately 23 years later. Survival is also the last Doctor Who story in which the lead actors are not credited at the opening, a practice used in the TV movie (in accordance with American production standards) and later in the 2005 revival.

The Seventh Doctor and Ace walk off as the classic series' final episode comes to an end.

Having surmised that part three of Survival was likely to be the last episode of Doctor Who for some time and possibly the last ever, producer John Nathan-Turner decided close to airing that a more suitable conclusion should be given to the final episode. Script editor Andrew Cartmel wrote a short, melancholic closing monologue for actor Sylvester McCoy, which McCoy recorded on 23 November1989 - by coincidence, the show's twenty-sixth anniversary.

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep and the rivers dream, people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold! Come on, Ace — we've got work to do!"

The quote above was dubbed over the closing scene as the Doctor and Ace walked off into the distance, heading for further, unseen adventures. The Doctor Who production office at the BBC finally closed down, for the first time since 1963, in August 1990.

Although Survival was the last Doctor Who serial of the original series to be transmitted, it was not the last to be produced; that was Ghost Light, which had been broadcast some weeks earlier.

This story is the last to feature Anthony Ainley as the Master. He was not asked to return as the Master for the 1996 Doctor Who television movie. Instead, Gordon Tipple was cast as the Master for the prologue, and Eric Roberts played the Master (possessing another character's body, a-la Ainley) for the rest of the film. Ainley reprised the role of the Master for the 1997 computer game Destiny of the Doctors, which marked his final appearance as the character until his death. He continued to be active in Doctor Who, attending conventions and recording a commentary track for the DVD of the 1981 serial The Keeper of Traken. Ainley died on 3 May 2004 after a lengthy period of ill-health, aged seventy-one. A sound-clip of his laugh was later used alongside excerpts of Roger Delgado's performance in The Daemons for the 2007 episode Utopia.

This story was also the last to entirely feature Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor. McCoy returned briefly to the role in 1996 at the start of the American television movie continuation of the series, Doctor Who, to regenerate into the Eighth Doctor.

Finally, this story was the last to feature Sophie Aldred as Ace. Aldred would have continued in her role had the series been renewed for Season 27; however, her contract was set to expire at the middle part of that season. The character of Ace was set to be written out of the series in an Ice Warrior story called Ice Time by Marc Platt, with her character joining the Pyrodonian Academy on Gallifrey to become a human Time Lord. According to interviews with the production team, the new companion would have been a female safecracker named Raine Cunningham, whom the Doctor would have taken under his wing, with her gangster father as a recurring character.

Doctor Who eventually returned to production as a BBC television series in 2004, produced by BBC Wales. Rose, the first episode of the new series, aired on 26 March 2005. As the new series is produced as 45-minute episodes, this makes Survival the final serial in the series proper to date to be produced in 25-minute instalments, which had been the standard for the series since 1963 (except for a one-season experiment with forty-five-minute episodes in 1985). A spinoff series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which debuted in 2007, returned to the 25-minute, serialised episode format.

The battle at the climax of the story was recorded and is set on the site of the ancient hill fort at Horsenden Hill, Perivale. The majority of location recording was done in and around Perivale, with small sections shot at nearby Ealing, outside and near The Drayton Court pub.

The production team's efforts to use an early audio-animatronic cat was unconvincing; there is an extremely obvious variance between shots that use a real black cat, and ones that use the 'robot double'.

In part two (on the VHS release version — may have been fixed since for the DVD release), there is an obvious Power of Kroll-esque juddering between the special effects sky and the quarry location, as the Doctor and Paterson ride away from the Cheetah camp (in the long shot prior to the "worm stew" conversation).

However, at the start of the 1996 TV movie, the Master is shown still sporting cat's eyes (and apparently in the same body). Yet because these yellow eyes are only explicitly seen when the Master possesses Bruce's body, they may just serve as a visual indication of the latter's possession (while also harking back to Survival).

By the time of the Master's next appearance after that (TV: Utopia) there is no longer any visible sign of the affliction. He had since been "resurrected" by the Time Lords.